Ballmer, Do You Actually Read The Comments Out There?
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Biting my tongue as hard as I can, I am unable to believe the following statement.
“XP will hit an end-of-life. We have announced one. If customer feedback varies, we can always wake up smarter, but right now, we have a plan for end-of-life for new XP shipments“
Steve Ballmer stated clear as day that he is waiting for customer feedback on keeping XP. Seriously, he is kidding, right? While there are certainly plenty of people who have found the migration to Vista to be just fine, without too many major hurdles, there are countless articles, forum posts, emails and even signs in peoples windows indicating that they want XP as an alternative!
Now, outside of it being a major support hassle, I fail to see what irritating people even further serves in the long run? But even still, when you see companies like Dell using “We will still have XP after the deadline” as a marketing pitch, I would be willing to bet there may be something to this keeping the now dated OS around as an option for consumers who simply prefer something less “glossy”.
This not an anti-Vista or Microsoft rant. Rather, this is a point that I firmly believe is being missed by Microsoft. A large number of your own users have spoken out loud and clear - keep XP around until another option is available. Ballmer himself has finally admitted that things have been “a work in progress” with Vista, while others have already rolled back to their older OS anyway. So how about it, should Microsoft simply say too bad or instead, consider the will of their customers? You decide!
6 Comments
Krissi D
April 25th, 2008
at 12:32am
My brother recently had a computer made for his daughter at a reputable local computer store. I told him to ask them to put XP on it, and they said if that’s what he wanted, they’d do it; however, he decided to go ahead and put Vista on her computer.
Now, I’m teaching her how to use her system, keep it updated and uncluttered, and I noticed one thing very quickly. Her brand new computer, which has more speed (dual core extreme) and memory (3GB RAM) than any of my three computers (2 laptops and one desktop) and less on her computer, software-wise, runs so much slower than mine do. The difference? I have XP on all my computers.
Vista is bloated and slow and needs some major work. However, some of the new features, I admit, are pretty nice, but I wouldn’t buy Vista for those few neat features after seeing how slow it runs.
Mike Nelson
April 25th, 2008
at 1:15am
As a tech, I get at least one phone call a week asking, “Can I still get XP so I can run my already paid for software?” Or “I got Vista, and nothing works!”
I think MS is hoping that Vista is just going through growing pains as XP did the first few years. I am not convinced that is the case though. If I had my choice, XP is the operating system that I would rather work on, but Vista isn’t quite as bullet proof as MS thinks it is, more and more Vista machines are coming in all crapped up with spyware, etc. I saw my first Vista machine 3 weeks ago that was only a week old, and it had gay-o-bot on it. It didn’t take them long to figure out how to plant a fat partition on a Vista machine.
Wayne
April 25th, 2008
at 6:53am
What would it hurt to have XP as an option out there without providing any additional support/service packs. There is plenty of pc hw out there that cannot even run Vista. As an additional suggestion why not charge for SP’s. That way M$ could continue to make money from XP, while satisfying a large segment of their customers. Seems like a win/win for everyone, so why is Microsoft being so stubborn??
Vince
April 25th, 2008
at 11:36am
Microsoft and Mr. Balmer are listening…
They are buying their way into OLPC computers, to kick Linux out…
They are QHTR (speeding up) the real Patching of Vista, renaming it Windows 7, and hoping no one will notice.
Those two things done, Since they have been hit with the massive Active X bugs that compromised all un-patched Office/Works documents (which is how, based on old bug not patched for a while - the Chinese got all the names of Tibetans against Olympics, busted into Pentagon, and quite a few of other governments, companies and enemies)
Paid all their advertising to the media (which might not know truth if it was only option)
and know that generally, people don’t have the foggiest, and still believe in ‘user friendly’
Listening?
HL Hunt quit smoking cigars, because it cost him $100,000 a year in his time to light them…
Considering Mr. B’s income…
he can’t afford to listen.
Matt Hartley
April 25th, 2008
at 12:41pm
Interesting perspectives everyone, good stuff. :)
Paul
April 25th, 2008
at 1:46pm
I like Wayne’s idea, Linux has many different flavors, why not Windows? I do have a question, does Mac still sell and support it’s older systems?